3. Email reminders

4. Avoid rejection

Our online service has inbuilt checks to make sure all the relevant information is provided before you can submit. It also provides an automatic email to confirm that we've received your accounts. We'll send you another email once they've been accepted for filing.

5. Paper accounts

If you have to file paper accounts, you could use a guaranteed next day delivery service.

Accounts filed on paper need to be manually checked. We can only check them during office opening hours, and they can take over a week to process.

Send your accounts well before the New Year’s Eve deadline in case you need time to resubmit them. If your accounts are rejected and you need to resend them, you could be too late to avoid a penalty.

We will not accept postal delays as an excuse for late filing.

Bizarre late filing excuses

We've received some questionable late filing excuses over the last 12 months.

Unfortunately, we did have to decline these excuses on the basis that they were either untrue or not good enough reasons. But, we do accept that sometimes there'll be unforeseen events that mean a company's unable to file accounts on time.

In exceptional circumstances, companies can request an extension to the filing deadline. We must receive these requests before the filing deadline. You must also prove the circumstances were both out of your control and made it impossible for you to meet the deadline.

Last year, 503 people filed within the hour before the deadline (31 December 2017). But another 28,874 missed the cut-off point completely.

For private limited companies, missing the deadline incurs a penalty of £150. This fine continues to increase to £1,500 for those companies that are more than 6 months late filing their accounts. The penalty is doubled if your accounts are late 2 years in a row.

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4 comments

Comment bySimon Maleposted onon 10 December 2018

Hello,

I'm not sure what the right place to post this comment is, so am including here.

I recently submitted my accounts online via the joint CH and HMRC submission process. A day later I realised I had made a minor mistake and needed to amend my submission. This is available as an option on the Government Gateway account. I subsequently corrected the relevant entries and re-submitted to HMRC.

However there was no reference to resubmission to CH. Nor was there any guidance as to whether this was possible, or how to go about it. Eventually I had to phone CH to be told that any amendment would need to be submitted in paper form.

In an ideal world, amendments should be accepted by CH before the acceptance of accounts, and be possible online. But if the processes for this are not yet in place, at least post a warning on the amendment option on the Government Gateway for joint filing to say that you can't submit amendments to CH yet, and that a paper re-submission will be required. It would save a lot of confusion on users' part and a slew of telephone calls to yourselves at a busy time of year.

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